Animating...

This is the scene after the chop scene where the camera zooms into nods blank expression with his twirling eyes expressing his confusion and pain. I got a target camera and got it to zoom in on nods face as his eyes twirl round using the angle tool and the auto key to keep them twirling for 100 frames. A quite simple scene but one of my favourites at the same time.

Animating... The chop

This is the scene were nod tries to karate chop the breeze blocks in half and hurts his hand instead. when animating this scene I wanted to keep the camera angles close and snappy to try and emulate the actions, It worked well but maybe needs to be edited quickly between cameras. I set up 3 cameras for this animation and tried to capture a side view, front and hand close up while he chops the blocks. The animation involved was quite simple but effective, it involved the use of the move and angle tool to position him and his body into a karate chop motion which looks good in the render and then into the end position which will be explained in the next post...

Progress so far...

So far ive got about 9 clips done, which is just over half the total animation so im eventually getting there just the sword part and the end credits to go. Its going ok at the moment ive had a few problems e.g. the whole meshing and rigging part which ive had to scrap and just try and be creative with what i know, but apart from that its going well...

Animating...

Heres a screen shot from the scene where nod tries to break the block with a karate chop and doesnt lol. I decided to get a free camera to slowly zoom into his face while his eye's rotated 360 degrees to replicate that classic cartoon pose when a character has been hurt and stunded. this zoom lasted about 120 frames with the eyes rotating for about 200 so gives me time to edit the cut away...

Animating...

Here is a screen shot from the scene were nod is traveling on the floating disc towards the blocks he will try and break. This was a fairly simple scene to animate because there was only the use of the set key and auto key along with the move tool to move his body and the angle tool to shake his head and eyes. May re-do the camera angle as i am not to sure it works maybe from the side will look better only time will tell...

Environment and lighting changes: Above you can see a screen shot of some of the technical changes applied to the environment and the lighting, I changed the environment colour to a gradient pink. I then changed the Omni lights shadows to a slightly lighter density which looked allot better and less contrasty. And the final touch was making the far attention of the light go way past the edge of the floor plane to create less shadow on the floor and just where it ends which looks allot better int he rendered scenes.

Render testing, early stages...

I always wanted to render my animation in a skylight but the render time is taking far too long for me to able to use it and get it rendered for the deadline. When i used it last year for the group project i rendered four outdoor scenes and it took 90 plus hours all in all and they were all no longer then 5 seconds long... so i think i will stick with the Omni light and use the advanced ray trace render for it because it give a nice light and defines some detail in the scene much like the skylight.

I may change this depending on the later scenes...

Animating first couple of scenes

I have began animating my first few scenes with nod the ninja. These are fairly simple scenes as they are of nod a sleep and the camera zooming in to him then waking up. I havnt really used any complicated animating tools just the auto key and the move tool to shakr his head and roll his eyes using the angle snap tool. More work has gone into the camera angles as i have been using target cameras to cover more creative and interesting angles for the viewer...

The scene above is of a close up of him waking up...